Military aggression in recent weeks by Sudan against southern Sudan is costing more lives almost daily. After northern Sudanese forces recently occupied the North-South, oil-rich border town of Abyei, many analysts feared the worst: that more bloodshed would occur, killing many innocent people and placing great stress on the fragile peace between North and South. Sometimes nightmares come true.
CT senior writer Sheryl Blunt earlier today wrote this dispatch about how desperate things have become in remote areas of southern Sudan, just in the past week to ten days:
Peace activists and Southern Sudanese officials are calling for rapid foreign intervention in Southern Sudan as well as in the contested border region where reports of mass killings and ethnic cleansing are on the rise in the Nuba Mountainsand elsewhere.
In January Southern Sudan voted for independence. It is scheduled to secede on July 9. But reports of recent fighting in Abyei, located in the oil-producing border region, and Equitoria, is threatening the new nation’s future.
On Thursday the Sudan Tribune reported that Southern Sudan was calling for “foreign militaryintervention” in the border state of South Kordofanin order to stop the escalating fighting.
Joseph Ukel, a Southern Sudanese education official told the Tribune military intervention was necessary since Sudan’s Northern government had officially announced it would be driving Southern Sudan’s SPLA forces (Sudan People's Liberation Army) from the region.
Kimberly Smith, president of Make Way Partners, which finances the only indigenous-run orphanages in the country, said she believes the terror tactics being employed against civilians throughout the South are intended to stop the new nation from claiming its independence.
The north’s Islamic government is also reportedly employing rebel forces from the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) to terrorize civilians in Southern Sudan near the Uganda border. Smith said that on June 1 “the LRA attacked another village” near an orphanage known as Hope for Sudan that is currently housing 45 children.
“Although we cannot confirm numbers as yet, we do know many were wounded, some were killed, and others were captured,” wrote Smith in a June 3 blog post. In the blog, Lual Atak, the indigenous director of another orphanage of 550 children located along the Darfur border, described the atrocities the LRA solders had committed against thechildren.
He said, “They gathered all the little children together and started killing their people right in front of their eyes,” said Atak. “The children were so terrorized. The LRA then made the children begin killing theirown parents. After the slaughter, the boys were forced to carry large metal barrels, and the girls were forced to fetch water to fill the barrels. They then had to build fires around the barrels. While the water began to boil, the children were forced to hack up their parents and fellows bodies and throw their dismembered parts in the boiling water. After sometime, the children were forced to eat their own parents and fellows flesh. … Once the LRA knew the children were so traumatized they would do anything, kill anyone, and not try to run away, they left the village with their new soldiers and sexslaves.”
In the past the Khartoum government has employed Joseph Kony’s LRA to carry out attacks against Southern Sudanese. In 2008 the LRA captured 300 orphans from the village of Motiin Eastern Equitoria where Smith’s organization was about to begin building their Hope for Sudan orphanage.
Last week, Romano Nero, the orphanage’s indigenous director, sent pictures of women slaughtered along the roadside near the Eastern Equitorian village of Kapoeta. Children found on the roadside next to their mothers’ bodies are now being cared for at the orphanage. Smith said it had not been determined whether the LRA or Khartoum’s GOS (Government of Sudan) forces were responsible for the attack.
Similar LRA attacks in the south have been documented by German newsbroadcaster Deutsche Welle.
Meanwhile, reports of renewed attacks in the contested Nuba Mountain region are prompting activists to demand an immediate U.S. response.
“The United States must intervene and stop the ethnic cleansing of the Nuba that is taking place right now in the Nuba Mountains,” wrote Faith McDonnell, director of the Instituteon Religion and Democracy’s Religious Liberty Program and Church Alliance for a New Sudan in a recent statement.
McDonnell and others are urging Congress and political candidates tospeak out in order to prevent potential genocide. In 2009 Samaritan's Purse leader Franklin Graham visited Nuba and told CT that more than 1,000 churches have been destroyed, and between one to two million people have been murdered over the course of the 21-year war.
“What Khartoum is doingright now makes the situations in Libya,Egypt, and even Syriapale by comparison,” wrote McDonnell.
“Our friends are being slaughtered.”
Posted by Tim Morgan on June 11, 2011 6:03PM
Comments
We should all be extremely grateful for Christianity Today's willingness to print this story and put it out rather promptly and in detail -- a story of martyrs. It is very unlikely you will hear about this on any TV broadcast from America's liberal mainstream media. Look real hard and you may be lucky enough to find a short paragraph or two buried way inside the pages of our liberal press. Witness the silent holocaust of the Christians in Sudan. See the massive outrage nationwide and the call to action in all the nation's churches. See the march of millions of Christians on Washington, DC, over the inaction of our leaders. This slaughter could be stopped. It might have even been avoided. To those who believe we can dialog and negotiate and coddle them into ceasing from these murders and this continuing horror, I suggest you read the story of Christian Dietrich Bonhoeffer and his realization that there was but one way to deal with the depraved Adolf Hitler and his kind. Those who do not learn from the past ...
Posted by: Mark Miwerds at June 11, 2011
Mark miwerds: if you simply google Sudan and click news you will see major "liberal mainstream" news coverage. Why do so many evangelicals have to try and turn everything into a culture war battle point? This story is sad and important enough on it's own merits.
Posted by: Greg metzger at June 12, 2011
I have not heard about this and don't understand how it can be happening and is not written about or spoke about in the press. it's unbelievable that it can go on and we are doing nothing to stop it and we coddle the people in our country that are of this belief and punish those who speak against that belief. It will come to our own country if we don't help those who are suffering now. How can we be silent and uncaring with such horror happening to
anyonen anywhere. My heart is totally broken and I am weeping and praying and don't know how else to help but to speak about it so others will hear and care.
Posted by: alene at June 13, 2011
Pray,Pray,Pray and tell everyone about what is happening in Sudan, the story is of the evil that only he devil himself could devise, we have Gods' power and might for those who believe, not by might, not by power but by My Holy Spirit, says the Lord Almighty. Zech.4:6 Please pray and act according to His will.
Posted by: elizabeth heffernan at June 18, 2011
Excellent and timely article. Thank you for keeping us informed of these atrocities. May God have mercy on these suffering people and these little ones.
Posted by: Robin at June 19, 2011
These articles MUST be kept in the forefront. We must know about what is going on and support those trying to protect the innocent. Please continue to keep us informed and also provide information on ways that we can help and make a difference.
Posted by: Renea at June 22, 2011
This is a late comment. I am just reading your article,and want to express my thanks for your printing it. I have kept up with this story through Make Way Partners which I became aware of because of my daughter's plans to spend the summer at Hope for Sudan, along with several other college students with the Nehemiah Teams. Just a few days before the scheduled trip, the attack near the orphanage occured and the trip was canceled. The team was very disappointed, but of course the right decision was made. They had a back-up plan in place and are having a productive mission in Kenya, working with orphans and widows. All our hearts are still in Sudan and we pray for the vulnerable people and for those around the world who can and should come to their aid--especially the United States.
Posted by: Alicia at July 5, 2011
When you check the google searches, they are encyclopedia style research reports on not just what's news now, but history, etc., and they are recently dated, some within days. Your TV nightly news only mentions the starvation as draught related, not a result of Islam military units. It is just now being mentioned in quick one sentence "reporting" and back to the draught. The Nubaians are being wiped out now in the mountains where the oil is by the Islamists and the news isn't saying that just yet. The north wants that oil section which is supposed to be in the new south and Darfur next to this area is still in the genocide mode thanks to the Islamists. Is that in the news too? Ethiopine missionaries are worried that Sudan Islamists will spill over into Christian Ethiopia so they can surround south Sudan.
Posted by: Original Anna at August 4, 2011